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The Subject
He was tall. No, not tall. Massive. A dark mountain that towered over her, blotting out the dim lights in the ceiling. She craned her head back, trying to see his face, but it was lost in the shadows cast by what little light could trickle around that enormous, solid frame. She wanted to back away. To run. To escape from this strange new figure, this newest terror in the endless gauntlet of terrors that she had been running through since she opened her eyes. But she had learned her lessons well, and she knew that to run meant more angry shouting, more sharp blows, more nights without eating. There was to be no running, not at times like these. So she tightened her legs, locking them to the spot so they couldn’t run. She stared up at the huge newcomer, wondering what new torments he was about to inflict on her. Then he spoke, and she couldn’t have moved even if she weren’t afraid of punishment. His voice was a low rumble, like the thundering of the explosions in the pit, the ones that thrown the others to the ground and made them stop moving. It was a voice of power, stronger than even the ones used by the angry men during exercise period. It rooted her to the spot even though it wasn’t even directed at her. “Are you being serious?” the voice said. “This is her?” He was talking to the thin man, the only one who never shouted. She looked up at him, waiting for his response. No, he never shouted. He would just smile and say things to the angry men, and then they would yell or hit her or lock her up in the box without food. Until now, he had been the one she was most afraid of. But now this newcomer was making her wonder if he was the most terrifying person in her universe after all. *** “You had all the details,” Redmond Venter reminded him. “Don’t get cold feet on me now, Kahn.” David Kahn eyed the insurrectionist coldly. “Don’t bother worrying about that. I’ve already accepted your first payment; I’m in until the job’s done.” “Of course,” Venter said smoothly. “I haven’t forgotten how important your reputation is to you.” “It’s not some keepsake.” David respected Venter enough to be straight with him, even at a time like this. “It’s how I stay in business. Ahead of the competition.” “In that case, I don’t see the point in you complaining about any of this. You agreed to do this job and I haven’t held anything back from you. A deal’s a deal.” “I know that.” But bracing himself for the reality of taking in a five year old girl and actually staring down at that girl’s pale, frantic expression were too different things. At least she looked like a five year old girl. When Venter had talked about her in their months of correspondence, the offers and counter-offers that had wheedled him into this crazy job, she had always just been “the package” or “the item.” David had half-expected to find himself taking in a walking sniper rifle. No, it’s my job to turn her into that rifle, David reminded himself. Venter’s right, don’t you go getting soft now. Damn, she was thin. If he’d been so inclined, David could have bent down and snapped her neck between his fingers. Right now he was beginning to wonder if he might actually be doing her a favor. “You’ve been feeding her properly, I hope?” he asked, masking the dreaded uncertainty under a layer of cold professionalism as he always did when dealing with uncomfortable jobs like this. Clients should never know if they were getting to him, especially not clients like Venter. “She’s not much more than skin and bones right now.” Venter smiled, an expression that with him generally meant that people would be dying very shortly. “She’s tougher than she looks. We’ve made sure of that.” I’ll bet you did. David had known the man long enough that he didn’t for a moment doubt his capacity for ruthlessness. Everyone had heard the stories about Mamore. Children were as much an expendable resource to Venter and his followers as everything--and everyone--else. The girl--''No, the trainee. Don’t start sympathizing with her.''--was staring up at him with wild saucer-eyes, ones that showed off just as much white as they did brown pupils. He’d seen that look before, in the eyes of threatened animals with nowhere left to run. This wasn’t the tearful gaze of a frightened toddler; this was a gaze of instinctive fear. Damn. She’s analyzing me, David realized. She was working him over, deciding just how wary she needed to be of him. He couldn’t help but be impressed, regardless of the implications. How did you do it, Venter? Do I really want to know? But he would have to know, because in an hour Venter would be gone and David would be in charge of turning this girl--this trainee--into the weapon he’d been paid to forge her into. There was no room for doubts or sympathy in a job like this, especially with the money Venter was shelling out for the years--''Yes, it will be years''--of labor David was about to put into her. “Out of the whole batch, she’s shown the most promise,” Venter continued. “We used flash education for most of the basics, language, appliances, a little history thrown in, so all you need to worry about are the important things.” “You mean weapons,” David said. “And all the other things that will make her an assassin.” Venter nodded. “Like I said before, I want her to be you, Kahn. And the only person who knows how to make her that is, well, you.” “Easier said then done.” David wondered how much of this the girl was understanding. That would be the first step: figuring out how to communicate with her. Regular words wouldn’t be enough, not for what they would be doing. He looked back at Venter. “You said you had a ‘batch.’ How many of these kids are there?” Venter smiled again. “Need to know, that. Just worry about her and let me handle the rest of the program.” Program. David already knew that this was bigger than just his assignment, but now he was sure that Venter had a lot more up his sleeve. “I’ll need to know everything about her, then. Who are her parents?” “She doesn’t have any. She and every other subject are test-tube grown. Every gene is practically hand-crafted to suit our needs.” “Ah. I didn’t know the Insurrection had much to offer geneticists these days.” “We have a few bright minds working for our cause.” It was always a challenge with Insurrectionists to see which ones truly believed they could really achieve their goal of breaking from the Earth governments and which ones were just in it for a mixture of spite, revenge, or sheer war-hunger. David had always pegged Venter as being somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, but perhaps he was more of a believer than he seemed. “Who were the prime donors?” Every genetics project like this needed one principle source for the DNA. Venter shrugged. “Just one for the whole batch. Some punk I picked up on Mamore back during the rebellion. He’s been dead for years, but he had certain... traits that made harvesting a few blood samples worth our while.” Interesting. So this girl would essentially be the relative of some long-dead donor, though Venter’s scientists had clearly cut and paste plenty of other samples in as well, not to mention the gender alteration. He wondered how the dead donor would have felt, knowing that he was the ancestor of an unknown number of little killers Venter was trying to raise. It was an interesting legacy to say the least. Something to think about, later. “What else does she know?” he asked, indicating the girl again. She was still staring up at them, motionless. Would she only move if Venter said the word? “Some basic kicks and punches. We’ve been conditioning them all since day one to be ready for fighting. And don’t worry about trauma when it comes to the heavy-duty stuff. Our live-fire tests should have taken care of that.” “Live fire?” “It wasn’t much more than recruits get in any one of the UNSC’s branches,” Venter said with a shrug, as if that excused everything. “We lost a few subjects in those, but the rest came out tougher. Much tougher.” David was no stranger to callous brutality; he’d been experiencing it all his life and found himself employed by monsters far more savage than Venter. But this would be the first time he would be directly party to such cruelty. He knew already that he’d be inflicting it on a daily basis, because if he didn’t he would risk ruining his new charge’s potential completely. David worked and operated within the confines of reality. He had little faith in divine or supernatural powers, but now he was beginning to wonder if this was some sort of karmic retribution for a life of strife and violence. More credits than I could imagine. A chance to sculpt the best assassin this galaxy has ever seen. And all I need to do is become my father to get it. No, that wasn’t right. David realized he was getting angry, a luxury he never allowed himself on the worst of occasions. This was why he didn’t dwell on the past; it was pointless and self-indulgent. Besides, he would not be drinking his mind away and beating this girl for the hell of it. Every punch, every kick, everything I’ll have to do to her, they’ll all have a purpose behind them, David promised himself. A'' reason. But he still wasn’t sure he could go as far as Venter had. Maybe that in and of itself would be a mistake. “What does she answer to?” he asked, realizing for the first time that he still didn’t know what to call his charge. “Nimue,” Venter replied. “I don’t know what the hell it means. One of our program directors came up with it. Gave them all funny names.” “Ah.” So they hadn’t even bothered to give their little monsters proper names. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. ''Nimue. The girl who turned on her master and took his powers. Can’t let that little myth repeat itself, can we? “We’ll be in touch,” Venter assured him, turning to leave. “I’ll be wanting regular updates, of course.” David nodded, surprised that all he’d learned here hadn’t altered his opinion of the man much at all. “As long as the cash keeps coming in, so will the reports.” Venter nodded. “Of course. You’re David Kahn.” Then he was gone, leaving David alone with the girl whose life he was about to make hell--as if it weren’t a hell enough already. She was still frozen in place, though her head had turned to follow Venter out of the room. David had a pretty good idea of why she was so preoccupied with him. She turned back to face him, and now there was real fear in her eyes. She couldn’t have any idea what was going on. The man who controlled her entire world had just handed the keys of that world over to a stranger. David would have to use that confusion to his advantage. “My name is David Kahn,” he told her, bracing himself to do whatever it took to make her strong. “And if you thought things were bad before, they’re about to get worse.” She looked up at him, a small pale face framed by cropped dark hair. “Yes, sir.” David clenched his fists. “You know how to fight, Nimue?” “Yes, sir.” An ingrained response, one that she'd clearly said a million times before because that's what her handlers wanted to hear. Not that it mattered. He wasn't here to teach her how to make friends. “Then show me.” And he went at it.